Pro-choice protesters hold pictures of Savita Halappanavar, who died after she was allegedly refused a termination. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Images

Dr John Crown, a member of the Irish Seanad (upper house), has claimed that the Catholic sect Opus Dei is "a major player" in preventing the Irish government legislating for abortion in cases where a woman's life is at risk. He has called for members of the Oireachtas (the two houses of parliament) to declare if they are members of any secret organisation, arguing, that "there are potential conflicts of interest if one believes that one is answering to a higher authority than the parliament of the republic". While this is undoubtedly true, might it not also readily apply to any devoted theist?

Crown's explanation for the Irish government's slow crawl on legislating for the X case seems a bit cloak and dagger. Twenty-one years ago the supreme court ruled that a 14-year-old suicidal rape victim had the right to an abortion. Successive governments, against the will of the electorate, have failed to formalise this ruling. It seems odd to credit Opus Dei, seen by most as fanatics on the fringe of Irish religious life, with undue influence in this affair, when the separation of church and state in Ireland is an incomplete project at best, and Roman Catholicism holds such sway at every social and political level. I'm thoroughly unsurprised that Opus Dei should lobby for at-risk pregnant women to die alongside or instead of their foetuses; what's harder to comprehend is why almost 90% of Irish people continue to align themselves with a mainstream religion that openly campaigns for the same ends.

Let's have a look at less conspiratorial explanations as to the influence of the Irish anti-choice lobby. The republic's biggest and most powerful lobbyists are Youth Defence, An Cóir and the Life Institute, all operating, along with other pro-life groups, from the cosy haven of backwardness that is the Life House on Dublin's Capel Street. Funded largely, the evidence suggests, by US pro-life and Catholic groups, Youth Defence in July last year erected misleading billboards around the country, making lots of people (me included) very, very angry, and, unwittingly, spurring Ireland's pro-choice movement to action. The Life Institute and Youth Defence are currently being investigated for unethical political lobbying, allegations to which they have repeatedly failed to respond.

Youth Defence was co-founded and is run by Niamh Uí Bhriain – a former representative of the Catholic Eurosceptic organisation Cóir and a recent contributor to Crisis Magazine . We know that the Life House gang is supported by the Catholic church, as an archbishop, three bishops and a monseignor, along with numerous clergy with less fancy headgear, took the unprecedented step of attending an anti-abortion street protest organised by the Life Housers outside Dáil Eireann last December. Representatives of the Catholic church protested in the streets and lobbied openly against legally providing abortion to women whose pregnancies might kill them, legislation the Irish electorate has long since voted to enact.

There is no conspiracy here. It's no secret that US pro-life groups, with support from Irish American Catholic communities, need the myth of an abortion-free Ireland and financially support the denial of abortion rights to Irish women (rights to which, it is important to remember, their sisters, daughters and wives have safe, legal access).

And it is no secret that Roman Catholic doctrine grants equal personhood to a pregnant woman and a zygote (with room for manoeuvre if its hospital funding may be cut or if it's being sued). And it's no secret that almost 90% of Irish people still identify as Catholic. Knowing about industrial schools, the Magdalene laundries, and the systematic and illegal cover up of child sex abuse, we continue to affiliate ourselves with this institution.

Without wanting to insult Dr Crown, whose comparatively progressive voice I very much welcome, I must argue that the struggle is not to unmask the masons, the Illuminati, or the Opus Dei clandestinely influencing Ireland's socio-political structures. The struggle is to secularise the republic. Crown is brave enough to look for bad Opus Dei apples, but not to upset the whole rotten apple cart. Even as he warns against the influence of fanatics, he seeks to differentiate himself from those advocating "abortion on demand".

This is a phrase parroted time and again in the Irish abortion debate, conjuring up images of precocious teenagers yelling "I want another abortion Daddy! I want one now!". As Lisa McInerney convincingly writes, this kind of language obscures and trivialises the myriad valid, often tragic, reasons that more than 4,000 Irish women travel to Britain to use abortion services each year. Further, the use of this language denies the capacity of women to make their own informed moral decisions about when human life begins and when pregnancies can and should be terminated. The phrase "abortion on demand" is itself fanatical. To what "higher authority" as regards the complex philosophical and moral problem of abortion is it indebted? And is there any "conflict of interest" here that Crown, as a senator, would like to tell us about?